


The Shadow Realms

by Claudia_flies



Category: Captain America (Movies), Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Consentacles, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Horror, Lovecraftian Monster(s), M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Tentacle Sex, Tentacle-God!Steve, Tentacles, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, elder gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 06:14:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11961414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claudia_flies/pseuds/Claudia_flies
Summary: As soon as he enters the cave the soldier feels it, the wrongness in the air. Like the world shifted just enough to unnerve. The others seem to feel it too. Rumlow and Rollings and the other agents fidgeting, clutching their weapons convulsively. Disorderly and undisciplined.





	The Shadow Realms

**Author's Note:**

> I am super late to the consentacles party, but hey, better late than never, right?
> 
> Beta once again by the peerless Zilia!

 

 

He still tastes the bitter, acrid flavour of the bite plate on his tongue. Feels the phantom shape of it in his mouth. His throat feels sore, his larynx tender from screaming. Muscles still twitching from the electricity.

Function not yet optimal, but acceptable. He’d reported so, but the handlers don’t seem to care this time.

They’ve dressed him in flimsy grey pants and a t-shirt which offer no ballistic protection. He’s said that as well, but the tech had just laughed. “Where you’re going, ballistic protection won’t help,” the words mean and hollow.

The soldier sits between two members of the Strike team. ‘Rumlow’ and ‘Rollins,’ it says on their name tags on their kevlar vests. They clearly still need the ballistic protection. The soldier tries to not wonder why, his brain still aching. They both seem familiar somehow, the shapes of their faces sparking something in his memory, sharp and painful. The headache starts again behind his eyes, so he tries to not think on it too much; that always makes it worse.

His arms and legs are encased in unbreakable steel and tungsten shackles. He wonders why they need them. He would never disobey orders. Wouldn't go against his handlers. Even just the thought hurts, firing something in his brain again like a punishment.

The car finally stops with a jolt and Rumlow releases him from the bindings, his face grim. The entry into the building in hidden in a side alley, dirty and smelling of human waste.

They take an old, rusted service elevator down. Down past where the floor numbers stop, past where they have to turn on their torches in the darkness. The beams of light hitting the rusty walls of the cage as they descend. Eventually, the elevator comes to a stop and two of the Strike team pull the doors apart by hand. The metal bends with a pained groan, but finally gives, opening up to a dark hallway.

They descend further still, down a slick, dark staircase into what feels like the bowels of the earth. The soldier feels slime and grit beneath his feet. Feels as small sharp stones cut into his soles, making him bleed.

He says nothing. The discomfort is meaningless.

Finally, they come to a stop. All of them having to bend down to get through the opening of the cave. Rumlow shoves the soldier as he goes, making him stumble, feet sliding on the tacky, wet floor, stones cutting into him.

As soon as he enters the cave, the soldier feels it, the wrongness in the air. Like the world shifted just enough to unnerve. The others seem to feel it too. Rumlow and Rollins and the other agents fidgeting, clutching their weapons convulsively. Disorderly and undisciplined.

They are met by a group of men in dark robes. Their faces covered in intricate tattoos. The leader smiles, but there is no joy in it.

“Finally. Where have you been?”

Rumlow spits on the ground by the man’s feet. “Bad traffic in midtown.”

The man surveys at them all like they’re maggots, leaving the most hateful glance for Rumlow. None of them clearly worthy of his time.

“The Great Old Ones wait for no one,” he finally says coldly.

Rumlow spits again. “Well, they’re fucking going to wait for midtown traffic.”

The man hisses at Rumlow, showing his teeth. “Show some respect. This is where you gain your victory. Give the world to Hydra.”

Rumlow snorts, but says nothing. Then shoves the soldier onward, towards the middle of the vast cave. In the middle, there is an altar. It’s dark obsidian, gleaming in the low light.

They tie him down. The hemp rope bruising and hard against his skin as the knots tighten.

The discomfort is irrelevant.

Rumlow grabs the soldier’s chin between his fingers, squeezing until he barely feels it, the flesh going numb. “You will stay here and not struggle. Not matter what happens. Don’t break the ropes.”

“Да сэр”

Then he waits. The people move around him, but he doesn’t turn to look, bent back awkwardly toward the dark domed roof of the cave. He doesn’t know how long he waits, body sinking into the position, into the ache of his muscles and screaming pull of tendons.

Eventually, they start the ceremony. The soldier feels a cold, slow and constant draft over him on the altar. He breathes slowly, in and out. Stays still. Stays obedient. This is his purpose.

The men in robes speak words in a language he cannot understand, and he speaks so many. He wonders why Hydra did not see fit to teach him this one.

The Strike team gets more and more unnerved. He can feel it, hear the minute shift of their bodies, hands on the butts of knives, fingers on triggers. They must feel the wrongness too, the shift in the air. The approaching darkness.

There’s a ripple, like a tearing of a fabric, like a curtain pulled back. A monstrous mass of shifting moving limbs fills the chamber.

The soldier feels his face drawing in rictus horror, but it’s distant, his brain, his eyes fighting what he’s seeing.

Then there’s a voice. Overwhelming and overpowering.

The men in the robes chant, servile and insipid, their strong voices suddenly crumbling into desperate moans.

“Oh, Great Old One!”

He thinks they are kneeling, groveling on the ground. The soldier thinks of maggots, festering and wriggling in the body cavities of the dead.

“Heed our sacrifice. The First of Hydra. The most powerful gift we give you. Bestow upon us your favor, Oh Great Old One. Heed our call, our cry. We beg you to show us your favor.”

Then there’s something else. Some _one_ else. Others on the periphery. He’s suddenly able to distinguish forms in the writhing mass of horrors. Others pushing through the veil. A spider, he thinks. And someone else too, softer. The soldier smells woodlands, the shivering of leaves in winter.

They are darting, almost curious in the way they move, he thinks. They don’t feel bad, don’t hurt him as they glide over his body, mapping the sacrifice given. He breathes, muscles still screaming where he’s bound.

Still the scent of woodland remains all around him. Then limbs, curving around him. No, not limbs; tentacles. Smooth as silk, visceral and real. Golden, they glimmer in the low light. The strange feeling of something touching his mind. That sense memory of the current of the chair, and he nearly convulses in his bindings, left hand breaking the hemp rope binding him.

“Asset! Stay still!” Rumlow hisses. There’s a sharp pain in his thigh. He knows what it is, feels the thin, short blade of a Gil Hibben knife. A reminder to stay still, so he does, freezing in place.

The tentacles around him stiffen too. Prodding the knife curiously where it sticks out of his flesh. The soldier breathes through his teeth, tries to swallow the pain. The tips now feeling the blood running down the fabric, sticking it to his skin.

The pressure is back in his mind. Words, speech he thinks, but he doesn’t understand it. It makes him want to curl up and hide. The immense pressure filling the empty spaces of his consciousness. It prods and feels where he is void and damaged.

And then, as swiftly as it appeared, the presence pulls out of him. It makes him feel strangely vacant. Oddly alone.

The spider skitters around the dome. Its body is huge, a shiny black-red in the dark.

The first horrifying presence fills the space, envelops them all, swells like the ocean, and for a moment, the soldier welcomes death. Welcomes rest.

He hears the men call out, their voices ragged and broken. “Lord, Lord why do you forsake us! We give you the greatest sacrifice! Please!”

The soldier knows the sound bones of popping out of place, the squelch of tearing muscle. The wet sound of people’s insides slithering out.

The golden tentacles press over him, covering him, and the soldier waits for death, waits for pain and suffocation. Listens to the frantic gunfire, rapid and unfocused. Listens to the screaming and breaking of fragile, fragile human bodies.

Then there is only silence.

Out of the silence comes a hum, an almost gentle sound of woodland, a wind moving between the trees. The rippling of fall leaves.

The tentacles move over him again, over the ropes, pulling at them. The material disintegrating at a mere touch.

There is skittering at the edge of his vision, something fast and something red. The presence, the thing, the creature around him, hustles them away, almost gently, exasperated. The others dart in and out, and he thinks the sound is like a giggle, even if it still makes his brain want to bleed out through his ears.

They speak, words, he thinks, arguments, flying over him, and the soldier can’t hold on anymore. His brain is too sore, too damaged, and he lets go. Allows everything to go dark, a blessed silence, finally.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up on something soft. Goose down and cloud. He doesn’t remember this feeling. Cradled is the word, he thinks. _баюкать_. He doesn’t remember how or why he knows it.

He looks around and he’s in a room, he thinks. A luxurious suite. He remembers a hotel, a part of a mission, but they did not allow him on the bed. Made him sleep on the floor like a dog. That’s what they called him. _Собака_.

There’s a sense of great height. An echo of a great city around him as he gets out of the bed, shadows of buildings as he looks out through the windows. But everything is like looking at the world through a film, a great white shadow.

There’s that pressure in his brain again, and a sound almost like someone clearing their throat, if they had no idea what clearing of a throat would sound like.

When he turns, he sees the golden tentacles covering the floor of the room, and among the writhing mass is the head and torso of a man, or at least the soldier assumes that it is a man. He says something again and Bucky twitches. That brain-bleed feeling again. Those strange chittering sounds.

The creature seems to panic for a bit, clutching a hand over its mouth, eyes wide. Then a tentacle extends from the fray, carefully approaching the soldier. He waits, standing still, waiting. Obedient.

The tip curls around his temple and there’s that sense again of something in his head, and then like an elastic being snapped inside his skull.

_Do you understand me now?_

The soldier nods. The voice is melodious. Inviting and gentle inside his head, but his lips don’t move, no sound comes out.

No one has been gentle with him for a long time. He will be a good asset to these new masters. He bows his head, nodding.

“Yes.”

His voice is a croak. Throat parched from thirst.

The golden tentacles flutter around him again. Worried, the soldier thinks. It’s strange. For someone to be worrying for him.

_What do you require?_

He catalogs his body. Function near optimal. His stomach clenches in rebellion. Not optimal yet.

“Water. Food,” he says, and the head of the man nods, slithers closer. A fat little tentacle extending from the fray, settling in front of him. There’s a secretion on the tip of the appendage. It smells sweet.

The both wait, the soldier not moving, not taking, no permission until the creature’s brow furrows. Then the tentacle nudges the soldier’s lips and he opens his mouth obediently, letting the tentacle in.

The substance is sweet and salty. It tastes good and the soldier can’t help but suckle around the flesh in his mouth. The creature lets out a low hum. It reverberates through the soldier like a struck bell, making him suck harder, trying to elicit the sound again.

The sweet nectar is sliding down his throat, filling his belly. Quenching his thirst and hunger. And he’s so hungry, so thirsty. He sucks harder.

The creature is humming constantly now. Its mass of tentacles shifting and vibrating restlessly, sneaking to touch the soldier. His legs and sides and arms. It’s tentative, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch. The soldier doesn’t know how to tell the creature that it can touch him as much as it likes. That the soldier belongs to him now.

The soldier does not mind. The creature has not hurt him. Has not shocked him or hosed him down with a blast of cold water or wrapped a shock collar around his throat or held him down to…

The soldier is shaking and the creature is closer now. The human-looking part of him, the wide glistening torso and perfect face. Blue, blue eyes and hair like a wheatfield in sunshine.

The golden tentacles are wrapping around him, holding him, the tentacle in his mouth pulsing as it feeds him. He suckles harder, tiding his head back, inviting the tentacle deeper into his mouth. The creatures hums and smiles, pressing their bodies closer.

The soldier moans when tentacles press between his legs. Bold now, rubbing his balls and cock through the thin fabric of the grey pants he’s still wearing. He’s growing hard at the touch, the strong flex of the tentacle between his legs as they rub him, the way it fills his mouth, the way the nectar slides into his belly, filling him up, sating his hunger.

He moans, grunts, knees buckling, but the tentacles wrapped around his legs keep him upright, keep him bucking against those curious, flexing tips rubbing between his legs.

He comes suddenly. Soiling his pants, crying out around the intrusion in his mouth, rocking into the feeling.

_Pleasure pleasure pleasure_. He isn’t supposed to. _Bad bad bad_.

He’s crying now, coughing, scrambling to get away, and the tentacles release him, letting him hide in the corner. He waits for punishment, hands trying to hide his soiled pants, the slick feeling of his seed between his legs, sliding down his thigh.

The creature comes closer, then pulls back. Fluttering, worried around him. He trills something in the air, and the walls ripple like they aren’t really real at all.

Then the spider is there, but it’s not really a spider at all, but a beautiful woman. Beautiful and terrible, red hair like fire and deep green eyes like glimmering opals.

_“What? What have you done?”_

The golden one trills again, unhappily.

The soldier forces himself to rise from his hiding place. His new handlers are displeased. He still holds his hands in front of his groin, trying to hide his shame.

The spider smiles at him; it’s terrible, but also comforting, and the soldier feels his brain being pulled in multiple directions.

_“Don’t be afraid. We will not harm you.”_

He believes her. He can do nothing else under the weight of her direct gaze. Nods, a confirmation of understanding, and she smiles wider.

_“You will find clothing in your room.”_

Then she’s dragging the golden one out the suite, or the illusion of the suite. The soldier isn’t sure if there’s a difference anymore. He stands there for a long time, still, trying to catalog his body like he’s been programmed to do. He is no longer thirsty or hungry or – he notes with a detached sort of wonder – in pain.

 

* * *

 

The building is large, and tall. It towers over the shadow city below. He looks down, trying to make out the shapes of humans and cars. They’re there, he thinks, moving and living.

He finds the stairs, walks up and up and up until he reaches the top. There are voices, sounds and words chittering in the air. A great voice is speaking, laughing.

_“But he’s all squishy!”_

The golden one trills in response, and there’s something in the sound that makes the soldier incredibly sad.

_“Oh, don’t be like that, of course you can keep him,”_ the great voice says.

There’s another high pitched trill. This time it sounds annoyed. Indignant.

_“Yes, yes. Great suffering, blah blah blah…I ate them all, remember?”_

There’s the giggling sound again, a flash of something rushing around the others.

_“And you did very well, younglings, disembowelment can be difficult on such a flat plane of existence.”_

There’s the clearing of a throat, and this one sounds like they know what throat-clearing should sound like, but has decided to ignore the convention.

They all turn to the soldier at the sound, all those eyes and limbs and unimaginable horrors. There’s a distinct sensation of his brain trying to escape via his eyeballs. He tries to stand firm under their scrutiny.

The golden one rushes to him, long tentacles fluttering around him, but not touching. It coos and trills, strangely earnest. Blithely ignoring the one that made the sound in the first place, the strange creature lounging in the sidelines. Tentacles spread over what the soldier can only think is some kind of a chair. He thinks he spies a band aid over what he thinks is its nose.

The large, horrifying one makes a noise that can only be described a schoff. _“Oh, for void’s sake, you’re embarrassing yourself. You didn’t climb out of the primordial ooze yesterday.”_

He glitters in reds and golds, moving through the vast infinite space of the floor. The spider skitters somewhere. He thinks she might be laughing.

The soldier ignores the others, reaching out with his real human hand to touch, fingers skimming over the tentacle closest to him. He wants to say thank you, to express how kind the creature has been to him, how much the solider would like to serve him.

The creature reaches out, a smooth small tentacle coming to rest over the soldier’s head, and the voice is in his head again. He’s growing used to its presence.

_I am sorry I hurt you._

“You didn’t. I malfunctioned. I’m sorry.”

The soldier bows his head, but the creature chitters in distress, the tentacles flailing and then coming to rest gently over the soldier’s sides.

_No!_

The soldier flinches and the creature’s voice gentles, a soothing timbre in his head.

_No, you are perfect. So perfect_ , he coos. The soldier swears that the giant creature hovering over them all rolls its many eyes. They glint in the vastness of the room, in the low light of the ceiling.

_“I take it back, you clearly did crawl out of the ooze yesterday. It’s disgusting.”_

The spider smacks the large one, _“hush, don’t be mean. It is sweet,”_ and then she smiles again, terrible and sharp.

The golden one turns, looking at his fellows. His tentacles skitter and sway as if shooing the others away, his expression reproachful, but his face morphs into a gentle smile as soon as he turns back to the soldier.

_Will you let me help you? I can feel the parts of your mind they tried to destroy,_ the creature asks, like he wants the soldier to decide. It is a kindness he has not been ever given before and he feels humbled by it.

“Yes,” he croaks out, voice still unused to speaking. He doesn’t truly understand what the creature wants, what parts of him it wishes to fix, but he agreed to it all willingly, just for a moment longer of that gentle touch.

_Come. Come with me._

The tentacles pull him along, down the straits back into the room he’d woken in, back into the cloud and goose down. The creature arranges pillows and blankets and soft things around him, nesting him into the softness. The soldier breathes, his body unused to such gentle handling.

Time blends. Days, maybe weeks.

He eats and he sleeps. Sometimes, he thinks, at the same time. He wakes up with the tip of a golden tentacle in his mouth. It feels good between his lips, against his tongue. The sweet-salty liquid filling his belly. Nothing hurts, the lack of pain sometimes as startling an open sore would be, a knife slowly pulled from his belly.

The mass of tentacles all around him, holding him, cradling him. The low hum of the creature lying beside him. It feels good, this strange closeness he’s never remembered having. He’s not on the floor, not cold, not still and waiting for the pain to stop.

He gets hard sometimes, but the creature doesn’t touch him there anymore, very careful to stay away from his groin. The soldier wants to touch himself, but he doesn’t know if that’s allowed. He doesn’t ask, lets his cock throb in time of the pulsing of the tentacle in his mouth, with the swipes of his tongue over the smooth flesh as he eats, as he drinks his fill.

He wakes to the body curved around him, a warm chest pressed into his back, a set of strong arms around him. That humming voice at the back of his neck. The hum is low and trembling now, like a deep breath, like a snuffling snore. The tentacles shift and tremble around him as if in deep slumber.

The soldier spreads his legs. His cock aches with the need for release. He suckles down harder on the tentacle in his mouth, needy. Small, quiet whines escaping his throat, and yet the creature sleeps.

Carefully he shifts, runs his fingers over the bulge of his cock. He shudders, both at the sensation and at the forbiddenness of it. Fingers curling around the hot length through the fabric.

He manages a few pulls, glorious and toe-curling, before several curious tentacles twine around his wrist, in-between his fingers, feeling him. He lets them, wants them, the cool smooth feel of them on his skin.

He shoves down his pants, and the tentacles help, pulling and tugging and sliding up his thighs. Between his legs. Inquisitive and nimble where they twine around the tops of his legs.

The soldier grabs his cock, pressing a finger into the wet fold of his foreskin, thumbing the head. His body still remembers how to do this, a muscle memory of pleasure. He lets his metal hand ghost over his balls, cooling the tight and heated skin. A few tentacles follow, caressing him there. A curious one sneaks between his buttocks, sliding into the cleft.

The soldier grabs the back of his knee, pulls it to his chest to give that curious tentacle more room. Wanting it to explore, and it does, wriggling and pressing against his anus. He has to pant, coaxing the fat, sweet tentacle out of his mouth. Slick trails of saliva and its liquid dribbling down his chin.

Then he feels them, wide hands on his hips, holding him, and suddenly the tentacle probing his hole is wet at the tip, dripping. Sliding over his perineum, nudging the back of his balls while another tentacle leisurely wraps around them, tugging until he moans.

There’s an answering low rumbling hum against the back of his neck. The hands tighten on his hips, keeping him still for all those exploring appendages. The curious tentacle slides back up and presses inside him, just a little bit, just so that he feels it, his anus clenching down on the gentle intrusion.

The other tentacles slide around his cock, forming a smooth, tight circle for him to fuck into. Lips at the back of his neck, slow little nips of teeth over his shoulder, and that hum, low and seductive now. It echoes in his chest cavity until there’s nothing but the sound and the pleasure.

The tentacles in his ass presses deeper suddenly, breaching him, and the soldier cries out, head pressing back against a wide, warm shoulder. His fingers tremble behind his knee, pressing into the flesh. He will have bruises, but he doesn’t care.

Lips shush him, admonishing, hovering over his neck with soft kisses. The hands on his hips move, coming around his body. One moving to hold his leg, easing the soldier’s grip loose, pulling the leg higher and wider. The other comes around his body, holding him steady against the smooth chest at his back. The nimble fingers find a nipple, tugging and twisting. The spark of pain making him arch into it.

He’s so wet now, the tentacle soaking his ass in its sweet nectar. There’s another one there now, sliding over his rim and then wriggling, pressing inside, entwining with the other. He’s wide open, so stretched. The animal sounds coming out of his wide-open mouth as he pants.

It’s too much, it’s not enough.

He rolls over, presses up to his hands and knees, trying to fuck back into the pressure inside of him. Offering and taking in equal measure. _Selfish, so selfish_ , his brain cries.

The hands smooth down his sides, the huge, gentle body draping over his back as another tentacle forces its way into his body, spreading him impossibly wider. They all twine and move in him, touching something that leaves sparks in his belly, in the base of his spine. He cries out into the softness of the bedding, the tight clutch of the tentacles milking his cock, cradling his balls.

Blindly he reaches out, hand searching until the soft, wet tentacle reaches for him too. He slides the tip into his mouth, sucking it, tonguing the underside. The creature blankets his back, holds him, hums grumbling and steady, his body, the tentacles around the soldier, inside him, all moving in the rhythm of that low sound.

When the soldier comes it’s both a surprise and eagerly awaited. Lips clamping down on the tentacle in his mouth, he tries to not bite as his body twitches and convulses its release. The creature trills and hums and kisses his shoulders and the back of his neck, the tentacles still pressed deep inside of him. It’s comforting, that closeness, the fullness.

The soldier sleeps again, after. Fingers tightly wrapped around one golden tentacle. Holding it by his face.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up in the room again, but he’s alone. His mouth feels empty. His body and mind missing the presence they’ve grown so accustomed to. He gets up slowly, rolling his body off the cloud-like softness of the bed.

There’s a wardrobe in the room and inside the wardrobe are clothing. He takes things out one by one. Socks. Underwear. A t-shirt and dark pair of pants. A long-sleeved shirt. It’s red like blood. He dresses, pulls the shirt over his head, looks at his reflection in the glass, distorted and shadowed.

His head feels strange, heavy and full. Things glinting at the edges. It takes him a moment to understand that they’re memories. His memories, glittering suddenly like glass and gold.

 

The sound of a bone saw. When he looks down, his arm is gone. He doesn’t remember screaming.

A table, cool under his back. A piggy-faced small man with a nasty gleam in his eyes. There’s a syringe in his hand.

Trenches. The smell of mud and blood. The weight of a rifle in his hands. The seeping cold of a foxhole.

Hot Brooklyn streets in the summer. His sister’s Sunday best, the fabric blowing in the breeze on their way to church.

His mother kissing the top of his head, hands warm over his back. “You sleep now, Bucky,” as she rocked him to sleep.

 

The soldier – no, not the soldier, not anymore, _Bucky_. He’s Bucky.

Bucky shakes his head, trying to clear it as much as possible. Trying to push the memories away, to a more manageable place. He’s been without them for so long that they feel strange and unyielding.

When he finally leaves the room, the creature is waiting for him, hovering almost nervously by the edge of the living space. Bucky thinks the creature might be blushing. The faint dusting of red over its cheeks and down the slope of its neck.

“What’s your name?” he asks, lacking anything else to say.

The creature says something in reply, a slithering, hissing stretch of vowels, but there’s a shape of a word, something familiar that catches in Bucky’s mind.

“Can I call you ‘Steve’?”

“Yes,” the creature is nodding, and just like that, suddenly, he understands, the trilling sounds forming into, not words as such, but language and concepts in his mind. No need for touch anymore. He feels sad at that realization somehow. Hands wanting to automatically reach out.

The creature, _Steve_ , smiles. He’s happy, Bucky thinks. Tentacles fluttering and twitching excitedly.

_“You understood the others, but not me, I thought – I thought something was wrong, that – that I wasn’t doing it right, but now, it’s good. You understand, yes?”_

Bucky nods, coughs, turning to face the wide open window. Everything is still gray-white, almost hidden unless you squint. Then the words are spilling from his mouth, grateful and worn out.

“You gave them back to me. Thank you.”

He stands by the window, looking down, trying to see things, people. He feels Steve moving behind him, coming closer.

_“This is the shadow realms. Our world. You can see reflections of other worlds, gateways and paths into anywhere you desire to go.”_

A tentacle presses into the glass, and suddenly everything is dark, a million stars glittering around them, bathing the tower in their million-year-old light. It’s breathtaking and terrifying, the vastness around them.

“Can I leave? Get back to my own world?”

As if burnt, Steve pulls his tentacle back and everything is once more gray-white and opaque. When Steve finally speaks, Bucky regrets asking.

_“You want to leave us?”_ Steve is wringing his hands and his tentacles, looking miserable. _“I am sorry. I should not have touched you.”_ He has a remorseful, guilty look on his face. Like he’s been caught stealing something precious.

Bucky shakes his head, rattled. “No, I’m sorry.” He feels his skin coloring, heat over his cheeks. “I wanted it – and I don’t want to leave, I just –” he sighs. “I have unfinished business out there,” he tries to explain.

Steve nods, looking at him carefully, almost shyly. It’s a strange juxtaposition. Steve’s monstrous body and voice and the coy way in which he’s observing Bucky from under his lashes, the light blush high on his cheeks.

“But – not yet. I could – I could stay, and then, maybe I could come back. After.”

_“I would like that”_ Steve says, sliding closer, careful in the way he moves.

Bucky’s never asked anything for himself. Not for a long time. He thinks of Steve, feeding him, healing him, and it would be selfish to ask for anything more, Bucky knows that. Still, he reaches out, fingers curling around one of Steve’s many tentacles.

The appendage shivers and curls around his wrist. They stand there for a long while, looking out into the gray mist, the city of the beyond.

 

* * *

 

The days and weeks pass in the shadow realm, and Steve is still painfully polite.

The others tease him, Bucky thinks, in their own twisted horrid language. Steve blushes and tries to shoo them away with his tentacles, sheltering Bucky whenever they visit the upper floors of the strange building.

The worst is that Steve stops feeding him.

Bucky asks, cautiously, about it one day, but Steve just says “food, oh yes, of course,” and turns to consult the others, rather than following Bucky’s gaze to the bedroom.

_“Which part of you is the mouth part that secretes the digestive juices?”_ ask the lazy one of them, his mouth tentacles moving in jerky waves. Suddenly very interested in the commotion on the floor.

Bucky points to his mouth, at a loss of how else to answer.

The creature claps its hands happily. _“You speak and eat from the same place?! What strangeness!”_

Steve hushes him, disapproval clear on his face. Trilling and wriggling his tentacles unhappily. The spider hisses something at the lazy one too, skittering around the giant sky-dome of the room. The large terrifying one rolls its many eyes again, clearly tired of their squabbles already.

Following that particular encounter, things start to appear at the apartment. A collection of dusty rocks, a pair of scissors, musty old books and a soaking wet cloth that smells strongly of vinegar.

When he questions Steve regarding the strange objects, the creature answers with an easy smile _“these are from your realm, yes? Food for you!”_ with a happy trill.

“I can’t eat these, these are not for eating!” Bucky grumbles with a frustrated huff. The weird cloth is really starting to smell quite bad.

_“What do you eat then?”_ Steve asks, with his usual kind tone, a few of the tentacles sneaking closer to Bucky but never touching. He wishes they would, leans towards them, but nothing happens. It’s like Steve doesn’t even notice.

“Vegetables, meats. Like chicken,” Bucky finally answers, tiredly rubbing his hands over his face.

He regrets it the next day when a flock of actual chickens appears on his floor. They are rather put out from having been moved from their coops and transported into the realm of gods and monsters. Squawking and flapping and shitting everywhere.

When he complains, Steve shows him a picture of a snake in the process of consuming an entire kangaroo. Flapping his tentacles slightly less excitedly at Bucky’s frown.

_“Do you not eat like this?”_

Bucky shakes his head, buries his face again in his hands.

He does eventually kill one of the birds, just out of pure frustration. The kitchen in the apartment is strangely well stocked and there’s a muscle memory of sorts, of his mother preparing a bird for Sunday lunch.

The next day, he gives Steve the clearest instructions possible. Names each of the foods and the format it should be delivered in.

(Bucky is in no way ready to look after a live cow.)

Things get better after that. The kitchen always stocked to the brim with the best of foods, or so Bucky assumes. Everything tastes good, fresh in a way that seems almost unreal. He wants for nothing, but he still wakes up with his mouth feeling empty, the shadow want for that fat tentacle between his lips.

And still Steve keeps his distance. It breaks Bucky’s heart, that little spark of hope in his chest that he could have been wanted, cherished even.

So he waits for Steve one evening, standing by the window with a heavy heart. Knowing what he must do.

“I have to go.”

_“Go? But why?”_

For the first time, Steve presses closer, tentacles wrapping around Bucky’s ankles, his calves, keeping him there. Bucky leans his forehead again the glass. It’s cool on his skin.

“I told you before. I have unfinished business.”

Steve must know, must have gleaned it out of his head all of those times they were connected. He’s wringing his tentacles in a way that Bucky has learned to associate with nervousness.

_“Will you come back?”_

For some reason, the question makes Bucky angry.

“Do I have a reason to?” he spits out, and Steve flinches, his tentacles trembling.

_“I would hope so. I – we, we like you very much.”_

“We?” Bucky asks, and it comes out more bitter than he intended. He feels tired and lonely, a discarded piece of equipment left in cold storage. Broken and old.

_“Uh, well –”_ Steve stutters, wringing his tentacles into even more intricate knots. _“I would like for you to come back.”_

He sounds so earnest it makes Bucky want to grind his teeth.

“But you never touch me!”

The words explode out of him, and then he feels ashamed. Demanding something that’s not for him. Steve and his family have been nothing but kind to him. They’ve given him everything, and all he can do is ask for more.

But instead of reproach, Steve’s looking at him with a wide, stunned expression, and Bucky turns back to the window, to the shadow city beyond.

“I – we – humans form attachments, I think. And I’d hoped, wanted, that you felt like that. About me,” he shrugs, not looking at Steve.

There’s a still, silent moment, and then he feels the careful touch of a tentacle on his back, the press of them over his ribs and the curve of his shoulder. Steve’s humming, gentle and low, the way he used to when they’d lain in bed together. Bucky closes his eyes, leans into the touch, not daring to hope.

_“I do. Want that, with you. For you to come back to me.”_

He thinks Steve comes closer, feels the heat from his upper body against his back now. Tentacles wrapping higher, around his waist, his legs.

_“I didn’t want to presume, to force you.”_ Steve sounds so innocent, so earnest. _“I had hoped that you’d come to me.”_

“But I did!” Bucky cries out, turning around in Steve’s loose embrace. “All the time!”

_“What?”_

“I was touching you, and asking you to stay with me, asking you to feed me.”

_“Oh. I thought you were being friendly.”_

Bucky shakes his head, but he can feel his face pulling into a smile despite himself.

“Steve, you may be a god, but you are an idiot.”

He presses against Steve’s chest, wiggles as he feels the set of tentacles wrapping tighter around his back. Reaching to frame Steve’s face with his palms, both metal and flesh and Steve doesn’t shrink back from either.

“You already gave me my past, and I feel so selfish asking you for a future.”

_“No, never say that, I would give you everything. All the stars in all the realms, they’ll be yours if you wish it.”_

He doesn’t doubt Steve’s sincerity or his ability to stay true to his word, but he doesn’t need the stars or all the realms, just this, just Steve, and he says as much.

It makes Steve blush, makes him move closer, the tentacles tightening around Bucky’s body. He’s thought about this in the days and weeks past. Sometimes wondering if it was just a fever dream, another fake memory among so many. Those curious tips now sliding under his clothes, easily stripping him, proving the memory very real.

Bucky leans up, pressing his lips to Steve’s, but it’s not really a kiss, as Steve doesn’t really seem to understand the concept. Their lips aligned, both of them just breathing into the hot, wet space in-between. Bucky doesn’t mind, smiling, leaning closer to close the distance. He’s happy to teach for once.

“Please,” he says, hand reaching out, fingers stroking over the tentacles all over him. Looking for the one he’s been missing, and maybe Steve knows, can read it from his mind, because the fat wet tip is suddenly within Bucky’s fingers, eager and trembling in his grasp. He pulls it up to his face, wrapping his lips around the tip, tasting that sweet liquid again. He can’t help but moan, needy. Feeling Steve humming, thrumming against him.

_You like this._

Steve speaks in his mind again, and Bucky’s missed that too. That pressure and presence inside of him. Steve doesn’t force, just gently asks for room for himself. Bucky tries to nod, to hum his assent into Steve’s flesh. He feels hands in his hair, gentle fingers brushing strands away from his forehead, looping them behind his ear, thumb brushing the lobe.

He doesn’t know how they get to the bedroom, but somehow they’re there. Steve lies back on the bed, pulling Bucky to him, on top of him. Skin to skin, flesh to flesh. Steve’s hands are on his hips, and the tentacles are parting around him, soft and slick.

Bucky’s gasping, mouth wet and open against Steve’s chest. His teeth catch on a nipple and he closes his lips around the nub, suckling. Everything tastes of salty-sweet honey, tangy on his tongue, feeding his mind and body and soul.

He rubs against the tentacles surrounding him, his cock hard and aching. Listening to Steve’s low rumble, the way it settles into him, a perfect oscillation, his bones and tendons and muscles trembling with it. Then Steve’s tentacles are guiding him and suddenly his cock is pushing against something tight and hot, then something gives and he’s inside.

Steve makes a noise, a low thrum and a whine. His fingers dig into Bucky’s sides, hard and sharp, and Bucky gasps with the sweet pain of it. Tentacles slide down his back, over his thighs, pressing his legs open. Pushing and getting him wet, soaking and slick.

_Bucky, sweet thing_ , Steve whispers in his mind, and then Steve’s inside of him too, the slippery press of the tentacle tips forcing him open. Rough and impatient and so perfect.

“Fuck. Steve, oh god, _please_.”

He’s caught between pressing back into the pressure inside of him, chasing the pleasure, and fucking into Steve’s body. The strange sensations around his cock, almost beckoning him deeper. He bites the fleshy part of Steve’s chest, the mound of his pec, catches the nipple between his lips again, needing something in his mouth.

_Shh, shh, sweet thing._

There’s another tentacle pushing inside of him, liquid running down his thighs and over his tight balls. He feels the tight clutch of Steve’s body milking him, and Bucky can’t hold on anymore. He’s coming with a cry, spilling inside Steve’s body, his asshole contracting around the tentacles pressed inside of him.

Steve doesn’t stop, wrapping more tentacles around his legs, pulling them wider, and Bucky can feel the pull at his hole. He’s panting with oversensitivity, his hand reaching out and Steve seems to know what he wants. Guiding that fat, dripping tentacle into his mouth. Feeding him, the weight of it heavy on his tongue.

Bucky thinks he falls asleep like that. Full and content and hopeful.

 

* * *

 

The world is strange around him. Loud and human in a way that he’d already forgotten in his time away.

He sits in the dark kitchen. Waiting. He’s been in this house before. Once, he thinks.

But not like this. Never quite like this.

He waits for the man to come home, from his ivory tower. Twirling the knife between his fingers. The blade glints in the low light of the street lamps

Eventually, the car pulls up and the automatic porch light switches on at the motion, illuminating the front hall. Laying shadows in wait.

Alexander Pierce climbs out of his Lexus sedan and heads home for the evening.

 


End file.
